Posted on: Tuesday, June 3, 2003

Frazier: No more Friday football

By Stephen Tsai and Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writers

The University of Hawai'i will no longer move home football games to Friday nights to accommodate television unless contractually obligated, athletic director Herman Frazier said.

"We're not playing home games on Friday," Frazier said. "Unless it is definite in the contract, we can't play.

"I'm not gonna ask our fans to be out there (at Aloha Stadium) at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday. Football here, to me, on a late Saturday afternoon or evening is an event and those fans come here looking forward to being at the game."

Earlier, Frazier rejected an ESPN offer for the Warriors to play Iowa State at Aloha Stadium on Aug. 29 — a Friday afternoon game on Labor Day weekend.

Instead, UH will play Appalachian State at night on Aug. 30.

UH, which has played at least one Friday game each of the previous two seasons, has one Friday game on its schedule this season, Sept. 19 at Nevada-Las Vegas. The game was moved from Sept. 20 to accommodate ESPN.

For home games: "To (ask) those people who are worker bees to give up their Friday afternoon at work to be there, it is just a different atmosphere from what you have on a Saturday night or a Saturday afternoon, to me," Frazier said. "To me, you have to preserve that. That's a part of Hawai'i football and I've only been here one season and that comes across right up-side the head."

Frazier said ESPN wanted UH to move its Nov. 29 game with Alabama this season to Nov. 27, which is Thanksgiving. "That's what they wanted, but Alabama didn't want to do it," he said.

Frazier said he believes the game will be shown on ESPN, "I just don't know the time (yet)."

NOTES: Frazier said before the WAC signs a new television agreement he would like a change in the way rights fees are paid. Currently, all 10 conference members receive an equal share of the package valued at less than $500,000. That agreement ends April, 2004. "You would hope there would be some kind of a bump (in revenue) for the team that has the appearance," he said. ... Frazier said former UH assistant Paul Johnson, the second-year head football coach at Navy, sought him out at recent meetings to try and set up future games. Frazier said UH is booked through 2006.